“The Shooter”

Posted On 30 Jul 2015 / 0 Comment

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I was only half-awake when I turned on CNN news last Friday morning. I heard the anchors referring to “the shooter” and I knew it had happened. Another one. Another mass shooting. Chattanooga is still reeling from the horrific killing spree of Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez. For numerous news cycles, Abdulazeez was “the shooter.” News stories speculated on possible motives, while also covering the funerals of the four Marines and one Navy sailor who died at the hands of Chattanooga’s shooter. Before violence hit our city of July 16, Dylann Roof was “the shooter.” His cold-blooded murder of nine African-American church-goers, one day more than a month before Abdulazeez’s rampage, was racially motivated. Roof’s social media accounts (and a blog attributed to him) were filled with racist rants…

…So far, last Thursday night’s mass shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, seems more random than Roof’s attack or the 30-minute attack on “soft” military targets in Chattanooga. John Russell “Rusty” Houser methodically shot 11 people in a movie theater, killing two and leaving one victim in critical condition. Police still don’t know why the 59-year-old law school graduate and “drifter” drove 500 miles to Lafayette from his stomping grounds of Columbus, Georgia, and Phenix City, Alabama. Other than an uncle who died 35 years ago, Houser didn’t have any known connection to the Louisiana city that was previously best known as the home of the Festival Acadiens…

…Thus far, it seems as if the murder weapons used by Roof, Abdulazeez and House were all obtained legally. Roof, however, should not have been allowed to purchase a firearm due to his arrest for Suboxone possession. While the possession charge was a misdemeanor, the law prohibits anyone “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from buying a gun. Roof’s gun permit apparently slipped through the cracks… with tragic consequences…

…Inevitably, the mass shootings in Charleston, Chattanooga and Lafayette have triggered renewed debate on “gun control” vs. “gun rights.” Meanwhile, seven people were killed by firearms in Chicago last weekend. Mass killings create national headlines. “Routine” gun murders, be they in Chicago or Chattanooga, wind up “below the fold” in the local paper for a day. We’ve become numb to gun violence. Some gun rights advocates think the answer is… more guns. They envision a United States of Open Carry, where citizen gunslingers keep the outlaws at bay with their pervasive firepower. Gun control backers want to make it harder for Americans to get firearms. There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground for these polar opposites…

…And that’s the big problem. We need to keep asking ourselves painful and difficult questions about the role of firearms in our society. We have let gun violence become the norm and some have accepted it as just an unfortunate side effect of their Constitutional right to bear arms. There has to be a sane approach to preventing more gun-related homicides that still allows law-abiding Americans to purchase guns for sport, home protection, or both…

…Here’s what’s scary: “the shooter” is still out there. The next one. He’s not “active”… yet. (And statistics show that it will be a “he.”) But his mind has already imagined the damage he can do. He may seek some twisted sense of immortality at the expense of innocent victims. He might have some racist or jihadist agenda. He might be straight up batshit crazy. But he’s out there. All we can do is hope he can’t get his hands on a firearm if and when something pushes him into turning his violent thoughts into violent reality…